IOT center will address challenges of improving urban living through smart infrastructure

The Center brings together faculty from multiple disciplines in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering to collaborate together and work with partners in academia, industry and government to promote innovations connecting the cyber and physical worlds via the Internet of Things to address major societal challenges. In particular, CCI will address the challenges of improving urban living through smart infrastructure & connected communities, and securing cyber-physical systems.

The Center will promote thought leadership by organizing workshops, seminars, and other public events, by producing white papers, and by hosting prize competitions. CCI will also establish an Internet of Things (IoT) testbed at USC to evaluate new hardware, new software platforms and applications and promote interoperability of commercial IoT solutions. In addition, CCI will help develop new curricula for graduate, undergraduate and executive education programs in the areas of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and IoT.

“The incoming torrent of the IoT will provide a myriad of opportunities to improve the everyday life of all people, particularly those in urban environments. CCI will serve to advance the state of the art, seek solutions to grand challenge problems, particularly as they affect society at large, and provide thought leadership across academia and the industry. A center such as CCI is also ideally suited to further expand the Silicon Beach ecosystem, in which USC Viterbi is playing an empowering role,” said USC Viterbi Dean Yannis C. Yortsos. “CPS and IoT represent a major new frontier in engineering and computer science, one which we aspire to shape and advance for the creation of new scientific knowledge for the benefit of society.”

“CPS and IoT technologies have the potential to revolutionize a wide range of fields from urban operations to manufacturing, medicine, business, education and even social work. They enable the automated collection and processing of sensor-based measurements to provide quantitative new insights about previously invisible phenomena. These new insights in turn will be used to secure and improve the performance of complex systems involving physical infrastructure as well as socio-cultural factors. By providing seamless connectivity to bridge the physical, cyber and social worlds, the Internet of Things will bring on major positive changes in how we live and work,” said CCI director, Bhaskar Krishnamachari.

CCI seeks to partner with relevant industry organizations and government agencies to form a consortium. Consortium members will have an opportunity to partner on cutting-edge research , collaborate on new research topics, and participate in the center’s workshops and educational programs. In addition, CCI events will provide networking opportunities for companies, organizations and students.